The prior art fiber optical light or image transfer devices in general have been relatively complicated to manufacture, cumbersome, space consuming and economically prohibitive for widespread commercial use. The prior art has recognized the need for accurately locating and aligning each fiber in an array but the relatively small size of each fiber and the brittleness thereof make this difficult.
Hicks U.S. Pat. No. 3,043,910 describes the use of relatively thin, flat spacer strips inclined at an angle to the lengthwise extent of the fibers. Such strips do not accurately locate and/or hold the fibers in precise location to one another in each of the three planes that are perpendicular to one another. The particular problem that is not solved by Hicks is the tendency for one ribbon to skew, squirrel or twist relative to the other ribbons along the length of the fibers.
Glenn's U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,116,739 and 4,208,096 attempt to solve the problem of accurate alignment and location of the fibers in relation to one another by using a spirally wound construction. This approach, however, also does not accurately locate and hold the fibers in the three mutually perpendicular planes.
Further deficiency in the above discussed prior art is the lack of a satisfactory construction for expanding a basic light transfer unit to larger size units without sacrificing the resolution.